O uso das redes sociais virtuais no ensino de ciências: possibilidades para o processo de ensino e aprendizagem segundo o olhar dos professores

Abstract

Among the resources made possible by information and communication technologies (ICT), social networks on the internet stand out. Social networks have been changing our way of relating, acquiring information, acquiring products, belonging to groups and behaving as a society. The impacts of interaction in these environments also reached the classroom, since students can interact with colleagues, teachers and content studied within these spaces. In this context, an extensive research was conducted with teachers of Science, Chemistry, Physics and Biology of elementary and middle schools of state public schools in Paraná, in which the perceptions of the use of ICT and social networks in teaching practice were investigated. through the reporting of these practices, to the concepts of teaching and learning of these teachers. For this, the qualitative approach was privileged and, through content analysis (BARDIN, 1977), the questionnaires of 411 teachers from all Paraná were analyzed. The results showed that these teachers can be classified into three main groups: "teachers who do not use social networks"; "Teachers and teachers who use social networks, but do not use them with their students" and "teachers who use social networks in their teaching practice." The reports on the use of social networks by these teachers were related to the teaching and learning approaches systematized by Mizukami (1986) and to the corresponding epistemological models inherent in each of them (BECKER, 1995). The results show that teachers who joined the network use a transitional approach, where there are still elements linked to the traditional approach and directive pedagogy, such as the attempt to control the student and the teacher's need to be the center of the process of teaching and learning, but it is also possible to find constructivist elements, where the teacher is a facilitator of the process and the student assumes a major role in his learning path. As a product of this dissertation, an extension course on the use of social networks in science education was suggested to contribute to the insertion, now pedagogical, of these resources that are already part of the daily school life.